Boricua Morena

As some of you may know, we're taking off tomorrow night to spend a week in Puerto Rico where we can get some warm weather and beach time before the full onslaught of Winter is upon us.

Given our flexible schedule this year, we decided to go on our vacation early this year to avoid the Christmas-New Year crowds and the ridiculously high costs. By moving it up a few weeks, our hotel costs will be less than 70% had we gone after Christmas.

Our plan is to fly into San Juan on Thursday evening and spend a night at a nearby hotel. The next day, we'll take a taxi to the eastern side of the island where we'll make our way over to the smaller Vieques Island, which we've heard great things about. We'll spend 4 nights on Vieques before heading back to San Juan for two nights to walk along the Old San Juan cobblestone streets and visit the fort. While we won't have time to check out the rest of the island or do any rain forest activities, we're saving it for a future trip. No need to do everything in one vacation, especially when you can come back. Last I checked, I'm only 2 years old, so I'm sure I'll be back sometime in the next 80+ years.

The convenient thing about Puerto Rico is that it's pretty much America without too many Americans. For some reason, many people from the United States prefer to go to the "international islands" of Domincan Republic, Turks & Caicos, St Thomas, etc, but not Puerto Rico.

My father's been there several times in the past and has always enjoyed himself. He finds it incredibly convenient logistically, even more so than its fellow Caribbean island neighbors. They don't require a passport to visit, they use American Dollars, your cell phone provider doesn't charge international roaming, and almost everyone speaks perfect English (literally no accents). And while there will always be Americans whenever we travel on flights that are shorter than 10 hours, you don't get the same concentration of them as you do in other Caribbean island destinations where my father will literally run into random NYC bankers and lawyers at the hotel pool.

Of course, this blog post wouldn't be complete without sharing some of the ways we saved money to make this trip happen.

• Flights: American Airlines using British Airways Avios (20,000 BA Avois + $5 per person)
• Hotel 1: Intercontinental San Juan using our AAA flexible rate
• Inter-Island Flight: Vieques Air Link but flew out of the Ceiba Airport (75 min drive away) instead of San Juan Airport which saved $150/person
• Hotel 2: W Vieques using the Starwood Weekly Hot Deals promotional rate

But best of all, this trip will be extra special because we'll have a special guest coming with us. All the way from Haifa, Israel, my grandmother will be joining us for our week long Puerto Rican adventure.